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Working Paper
Fiscal Dominance and US Monetary: 1940–1975
This narrative investigates the frictions that existed between the Federal Reserve?s monetary policies and the US Treasury?s debt-management operations from the onset of the Second World War through the end of the Federal Reserve?s even-keel actions in mid-1975. The analysis suggests that three factors can help explain why the Federal Reserve compromised the attainment of its statutorily mandated monetary-policy objectives for debt-management reasons: 1) the existence of an existential threat, 2) the fear that to do otherwise would create instability in the banking sector, and 3) the ...
Journal Article
Rising relative prices or inflation: why knowing the difference matters
Almost everyone uses the word inflation to refer to any increase in prices, but it ought to be reserved for a just one kind of price increase. True inflation has a different cause?and a different cure?than the price increases of goods and services caused by constantly changing supply and demand conditions. The Federal Reserve can and should act to control inflation, but when relative-price changes are putting pressure on businesses and consumers, the Fed can do little.
Working Paper
An analysis of Japanese foreign exchange interventions, 1991-2002
The effectiveness of Japanese interventions over the past decade depended in large part on the frequency and size of the transactions. Prior to June 1995, Japanese interventions only had value as a forecast that the previous day's yen appreciation or depreciation would moderate during the current day. After June 1995, Japanese purchases of dollars had value as a forecast that the yen would depreciate. Probit analysis confirms that large, infrequent interventions, which characterized the later period, had a higher likelihood of success than small, frequent interventions.
Journal Article
Intervention and the dollar's decline
An analysis of U.S. foreign exchange-market intervention and its effect on dollar depreciation, finding there is no systematic relationship between intervention and daily exchange-rate movements.
Working Paper
The Evolution of the Federal Reserve Swap Lines since 1962
In this paper, we describe the evolution of the Federal Reserve?s swap lines from their inception in 1962 as a mechanism to forestall claims on US gold reserves under Bretton Woods to their use during the Great Recession as a means of extending emergency dollar liquidity. We describe the Federal Reserve?s successes and failures. We argue that swaps calm crisis situations by both supplementing foreign countries? dollar reserves and by signaling central-bank cooperation. We show how swaps exposed the Federal Reserve to conditionality and raised fears that they bypassed the Congressional ...
Journal Article
Why intervention rarely works
Foreign-exchange-market intervention is generally ineffective when undertaken independent of monetary policy. But when undertaken as a goal of monetary policy, exchange-rate management can compromise price stability. This Economic Commentary explains the difficulties of implementing an intervention policy.
Working Paper
U.S. foreign-exchange-market intervention during the Volcker-Greenspan era
The Federal Reserve abandoned foreign-exchange-market intervention because it conflicted with the System?s commitment to price stability. By the early 1980s, economists generally concluded that, absent a portfolio-balance channel, sterilized foreign-exchange-market intervention did not provide central banks with a mechanism for systematically influencing exchange rates independent of their monetary policies. If intervention were to have anything other than a fleeting, hit-or-miss effect on exchange rates, monetary policy had to support it. Exchange rates, however, often responded to U.S. ...
Journal Article
A new role for the Exchange Stabilization Fund
Recently, the U.S. Treasury announced a new, temporary insurance program for U.S. money-market mutual funds. To guarantee payment of these funds? liabilities, the Treasury will use the assets of its Exchange Stabilization Fund. Created in the 1930s to stabilize the exchange value of the dollar, it has been tapped on occasion to supply loans to foreign countries in financial distress. This latest use of ESF assets is unlike anything the Fund has been used for before.
Working Paper
U.S. intervention and the early dollar float: 1973-1981
The dollar?s depreciation during the early floating rate period, 1973?1981, was a symptom of the Great Inflation. In that environment, sterilized foreign exchange interventions were ineffective in halting the dollar?s decline, but they showed a limited ability to smooth dollar movements. Only after the Volcker FOMC changed its monetary-policy approach and demonstrated a willingness to maintain a disinflationary stance despite severe economic weakness and high unemployment did the dollar begin a sustained appreciation. Also contributing to the ineffectiveness of the interventions was the ...
Journal Article
Do commodity prices signal inflation?
Do the rising commodity prices we have seen in recent years reflect basic supply-and-demand developments in various commodity markets, or are they the fi rst signs of inflation? In practice, it?s not always easy to tell the difference - for the public or policymakers - but fundamentally different they are. Central banks can do nothing about relative commodity price pressures, since central banks do not produce commodities. Likewise, commodity-price shocks do not impair the ability of central banks to control inflation in principle, but they can greatly complicate the task.